One of the truly great films of 2010, "A Prophet" is an unforgettable account of a young man's experiences in a French prison.

Malik El Djebena is only 19 when he's sentenced to six years in prison for a crime he claims he didn't commit. Though an Arab, Malik becomes the cat's-paw for an aging Corsican mob boss named Cesar Luciani whose influence in the prison has begun to wane as more and more Muslims are brought in to swell the prisoner ranks. Eventually, the ever-resourceful Malik finds a way to straddle the lines separating the various factions in the prison, while at the same time partnering with his buddy to run a hashish operation when he's out on his frequent 24-hour leaves.

The beauty of "A Prophet" is that we really get the sense that, had he been dealt a halfway decent hand in life, Malik might have actually been a kind, caring person, instead of the lost soul that he's become. But the lack of any parental influence in his life, his illiteracy, and now his consignment to prison life have left him with few viable options other than to become involved in mayhem and crime. He's horrified by the fact that, as a kind of loyalty test early on, Luciani forces him to murder in cold blood a man he doesn't know and might even like under other circumstances. And there are heartbreaking moments throughout where we sense the goodness in Malik's tortured soul. His appreciation of simple kindnesses, his attempts at learning to read, his childlike wonder as he looks out of a plane window for the first time, his tenderness with a buddy's newborn son - all go a long way towards mitigating some of the truly despicable acts of violence and murder he's called upon to do. The brilliant screenplay wisely refuses to judge Malik; it simply presents the options and parameters that have been given to him by fate, society, nature, what have you - and watches as he maneuvers through, in and around them in order to survive.

Harsh and brutal as this film can be at times - for it never shies away from portraying what life is like in a prison setting - it is in those more lyrical moments, the ones in which we are allowed to see into the heart of this young man, that "A Prophet" achieves true masterpiece status.

Tahar Rahim rises to the challenge in a brilliantly understated, award-worthy performance as Malik, capturing our sympathy and concern throughout. Niels Arestrup is also outstanding as the brutal and demanding Luciani, as is Adel Bencherif as Malik's one friend from prison who serves as both a positive and a negative influence on the young man.

Directed with unerring conviction and power by Jacques Audiard, "A Prophet" is a cinematic work of art - and a movie not to be missed.

I was really looking forward to A PROPHET, a much raved-about French prison film that had critics salivating and reviewers going wild when it came out. Having just watched it, I'm left feeling a little deflated. Disappointed. Because the film I just watched is very much an ordinary sort of prison movie that covers very familiar ground with little of the high drama that I was expecting considering all the praise it received.

Tahar Rahim, who underplays his role quite considerably, stars as a young Arab male who's sent to a notoriously tough prison. Once inside, he soon falls under the spell of a seasoned gangster, played by an excellent Niels Arestrup. The film that follows charts Rahim's eventual rise to become a notable gangster in his own right.

There's no denying that this film is well made: good shooting is employed throughout and there's a high level of grittiness to the realism that never lets up. The cast, although subdued, put in decent turns and the script has a tendency to avoid cliché wherever possible, making this an inventive viewing experience. There are some moments of intense drama and horror that'll have you watching between splayed fingers.

But such incident comes too little and too infrequently. The two-and-a-half-hour running time is at least half an hour too long, with lots of slow, drawn out scenes that feel repetitive and don't add much to either the plot or to character development. I've seen a fair few prison dramas, and the really good ones – ESCAPE FROM ALCATRAZ, PRISON ON FIRE – just feel more involved than this.

There's a level of iciness to this movie, a kind of clinical detachment that makes it a virtually emotion-free ride, and it's hard to warm to any of the characters. Even in a film like SCARFACE, where the lead was a very bad man indeed, Al Pacino brought vivacity and charisma to the part that made audiences immediately engage with his character. A PROPHET is the kind of film that looks impressive but fails to engage the senses too much. There's no denying that it's a very well-crafted movie, but it lacks the heart that would have made it a classic.

Malik El Djebena is a 19-year-old Algerian-French. He is sentenced to six years in adult prison. He is alone and gets picked on. The prison population is split between whites Corsicans and Muslims. Ruthless Corsican mobster Cesar Luciani forces Malik to kill Muslim witness Reyeb. Despite being a Muslim himself, Luciani takes Malik in as a lowly grunt under his protection.

This is a French prison personal epic. It is one of the better prison movies around. The only drawback for me is that I don't really root for Malik and Tahar Rahim never got my sympathies. I don't think the movie gives him the opportunity. I'm a little detached from his character. Nevertheless, this is a good tough prison movie.